>>okay...dumb newbie question of the week...what do you mean by "in
>>their channels"???? Is a new phrase to me.
>
>The admin people who run the robot-driven search engines have started
>to give "preferential treatment" to certain hand-picked sites over the
>past year or so. For example, if you do any search on Infoseek, you'll
>see that the top few listings have either one or two checkmarks by them,
>indicating to users that these sites have the Infoseek "seal of approval".
>These sites go straight to the top of the list.
>
>Also, these "special" sites are put into a hierarchical category listing
>(channels), just like Yahoo, so that users can browse instead of search
>if they prefer.
>
>As far as I know, this can't be bought, you only get it by merit. This
>site is included, it just happened one day and I noticed my Infoseek
>traffic hit the roof straight away.
>
>It sort of backs up what I've always said: work on your content and
>the site will promote itself.

Thanks for the new info Jim! I never heard of Channels either.
But I checked on infoseek under several major keywords (like computers)
and didn't see any checkmarks. Have they ended this practice or did
I just miss the checks?